bias with women on commercials?

Question

Can someone tell me if they feel the same way as I do. Every single cleaning,cooking, or baby commerical only shows a woman talking about how she is disatisfied with her current mop or duster or how she is excited to make the "new" recipie. The baby commericials are the worst, women only...changing feeding with the words " here is how to care for YOUR baby. I don't get it...please someone either agree or disagree with me and explain why. I think this is subtle role affirmation, and I am sick of it

Answer 1

Of course. The purpose of a commercial is not to change values (as false as they may be) or the every-day behavior...but it's to target consumers. The majority of those who cook and clean and stay home with babies are still women...so who else should they target?

Answer 2

I agree, they definitely put women in those roles just as they still put men in the beer drinking sports ads. The problem is, they are advertising. I don't think they are doing it for the purpose of "role affirmation".

Think of the men you know; what product is a man more likely to go out and buy after seeing the two following ads on tv: (1) A commercial for a beer with guys cheering and watching sports or (2) A commercial with a couple of guys having fun vacuuming their new house.

Not saying I agree with the way companies advertise, but they do it for a reason--because it works, and there are just enough people in both stereotypes for the commercials to be effective.

Answer 3

You say that this is subtle discrimination against women. Have you ever considered that this is also a subtle form of discrimination against men? Where are the role models showing men that it is okay to feed and change his baby, prepare his family a mediaeval feast or a Civil War dinner, or swiffer the bathroom floor?

By the way, for the guy who asked what you do when the dishwasher stops working and then answered his own question by recommending slapping her and telling her to get back to work, I have another suggestion. You could go visit the dish washer at the funeral home and then sing 'Amazing Grace' at karaoke and dedicate it to her.

Answer 4

For me, I think it is more offensive to men.

It's evidence of our mother-culture that still seems to see men as incapable of being as good of a parent as women. Judging by marketing, you would think men were only necessary in parenting for the occasional fishing trip with their sons, or to dote on ultra-feminine little girls.

It's common now-a-days for men to be either unrepresented in these cornerstones of life, or when represented, to be depicted as somehow inept or incompetent. Such as the "stupid husband" commercials.

Theres a commercial being aired nationally right now, you may have seen it, Where the husband/father has made a mathematical error with cell-phone minutes, and the wife/mother as well as the kids roll their eyes at him laughing about how the kids need to stay in school, subliminally so they won't end up "stupid like dad".

I have big issues with this kind of advertising, because were the roles reversed, and it were mom making the error, it would have a snowballs chance in hell of actually making it on the airwaves, and if it did so many would be in an uproar, I think the networks would immediately pull it from circulation.

I see these commercials, and the ones you spoke about as a bias FOR women. While we are represented often in the home, this is also balanced out with commercials that depict us in different employment environments, (remember the tostitos commercial, where the woman is in the board room doing all the work as the men look down at the construction crew below, ironically commenting on their lazyness?)

Answer 5

Yup... I do sometimes see ones with the man represented in it, which is great, but often the woman is still the central figure that's focused on.

Also tired of the ones where we are nothing more then objects. I saw some commercial recently for a show or something along those lines...and the only shots of female characters shown were sexual... gerr...

I really wouldn't have much issue with this stuff if the score was evened up 50/50.

Answer 6

As a woman who could care less about recipes, babies, or the current status of my mop, I agree that those commercials can be rather sexist. However, the truth is that the products featured in the commercials have done market research and find their chief demographic to be women between ages 25-49, who are typically stay-at-home moms. Those products rely on the market research they conducted to determine the angle for their advertisements. A commercial for baby wipes, say, featuring a man cleaning his baby's tushie while its mama was off being a VP in sales would be politically correct, but a large part of advertising is appealing to something that the members of your chief demographic can relate to. If the numbers in the market research conclude that most of the chief consumers of that product are women who stay home with their children, that's exactly who they're going to base their commercials upon.

Answer 7

I'll echo what some have said: yes, it's prevalent, yes, it's related to marketing, and no, it does not reflect reality. But who does this hurt? To be honest, it stereotypes both sexes: it makes men look as though they have nothing to do with housework or childrearing, and it makes women look as though they have nothing else to do. These commercials are often on when children can see them, and kids get the idea of gender roles that haven't existed since the 1950s, if then. I asked a similar question about cleaning products...women are over-represented in anything to do with domestic work. Men are the ones who buy power tools (I wonder how many women, like me, actually bought those power tools for men?) and everything else related to building, fixing, or sports. At least according to TV ads. What I find to be an interesting phenomenon in advertising is how inept men are made to look when they are portrayed in ads about domesticity. In fact, they're made to look stupid in so many ads that even I am offended. So yes, I agree with what you're saying; I do think it's an insidious marketing strategy; and I don't like that children's minds are being warped by stereotypes (btw, do you notice how black women and white women are portrayed in these commercials? That's a whole other topic, but it's not positive). I especially hate the way men are made to look stupid. However, I think the advertisers are just doing what they're told by marketing groups. There's a whole pile of wrong here, mainly because it's money doing all the talking.

Answer 8

The majority of TV watchers are women. The majority of consumers are women. The man is usually the breadwinner but it's the woman who uses the money.

This is why commercials cater to women; they show women, they show men as incapable idiots and the woman as all knowing (if there aren't any rules about this, there should be. If it was the other way around, you'd have all the women suing).

Answer 9

I don't really watch TV, if I do its the history or science channel. Not too many commercials about babies or mops to be honest. More over they are trying to sell a product with a marketing idea. It's nothing personal. I don't agree that is what they are saying.

Answer 10

Yes, I'm sick of this, as well as sick of every guy portrayed on TV to be a dumb ***** lucky enough to have found his strong, smart wife/girlfriend.

I'm sick of watching guys getting kicked in the nuts while people laugh, sick of guys always getting put down, ridiculed, and sick of hearing about studies where a bunch of 12 year old kids are asked "who's likely to play the part of a smart honest lawyer, businessperson, or person who never loses a fight, or always finds the solution on TV" and they answer "the women" whereas asked who plays the stupid, baffoon, always getting into trouble, and they answer with the "man." This sends great messages to our youth.

I'm sick of every baby killing mother sympathized with instead of dealt with in the same way a man would be. I'm sick of front page news some guy who allegedly touched his secretaries *** and now labelled a sexual predater, but a 33 year old female teacher gets probation for raping an 11 year old boy 26 times.

So as it sits, I think you've got it pretty good with your little cleaning commercials. Because in reality, 4/5 women polled prefer flexable hours over higher pay so they can be home more with their families, and that is the reason marketers aim the cleaning ads at women. When you get older, you'll wake up to the fact 60 hour work weeks aren't fun, and doing a bit of cleaning is a good deal in exchange.

The monkeys who taught you this anger towards considering a woman would lower herself to clean are dysfunctional societal deviants unfit to mould young impressionable minds like yours.

And a note to James (couple posts above) - the reasons we have anti-male biased commercials is women now account for 75% of consumer purchases, and the entire media has adapted to this new phenominum: Programming, Movies, News, Papers and so forth all cater to women with goals to keep them glued to the TV.

And no, I'm not really pissed off, I'm just showing you the opposite viewpoint to your arguement. There's 2 sides to every story, the truth generally lies in the middle.